Chancellor Berdahl speaks out on U.S. foreign policy'We stand isolated from our allies,' chancellor observes. He views 'radical departure' from established policy with a citizen's concern.

Jonathan King, Public Affairs |
18 March 2003

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl

On Monday, March 17, shortly before President Bush delivered
his televised ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, Chancellor Robert
Berdahl spoke with the Berkeleyan about his personal feelings – as
a historian and a citizen – about
the imminent hostilities.

Berdahl was at pains to distinguish his own personal opinions
from those of the university he represents in an official capacity. "I
have my own personal points of view about all of this," he
said while visiting family in Minnesota, "but the difficulty
that I always face is that whenever I speak, it is interpreted
as if I am speaking on behalf of the university."

He acknowledged that he has in fact spoken his mind in recent
weeks on aspects of the current political situation – for
example, in the most recent installment of his online radio
program, "Bear
in Mind," when he asserted that
the national media is "refusing to meet its obligation
to educate the public" in the current crisis. In that
program he expressed his concern that the Bush administration,
in considering a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, is promulgating
a "radical change" in foreign policy.

"I feel as though this is an unprecedented departure
in American foreign policy: to launch an offensive attack on
a sovereign nation that does not, even by the estimates of
the administration, pose an immediate threat," Berdahl
said. "Nor has it attacked us directly. It really crosses
a psychological threshhold that we have never crossed before
in our foreign policy. And it's an important threshhold
insofar as it's always easier to cross it again once
it has been crossed."

Offering a closer look into his thinking, Berdahl — an
expert in German history who taught at the universities of
Texas, Illinois, and Oregon before coming to Berkeley in 1997 —continued: "We
now stand isolated from virtually all of our historic allies,
with the exception of Britain. We are opposed in this action
by the established, stable, historic democracies of France
and Germany and Canada, and some of the other western European
states. In addition, we're opposed by other major powers,
Russia and China in particular.

"This has been a very historic turning point in American
foreign policy, one that has left NATO in tatters, and the
United Nations seriously damaged — all the international
institutions that have been built up since the Second World
War. It's a radical departure, and I can't help
being concerned about it as an American citizen."

Discourse is 'our role, our job'

Berdahl reiterated his often-articulated stance that universities,
and Berkeley in particular, have a unique role to play as places
where differing ideas and factions "come together, intersect,
and interact."

"Just because the discourse internationally has apparently
ended, and is being replaced with arms, does not mean that
it should stop taking place here," he
said. "That's our role; that's our job. I hope people will
be respectful of what the university is — a place where differing points
of view do meet, and where they try to engage in rational debate over their
differences."

Asked what he thought might transpire on campus should war
begin this week, as many —even prior to the president's
ominous address later that evening — have believed it
might, Berdahl said, "Obviously, there will be demonstrations,
probably on both sides of this issue. There will be those who
support the war, who will want to make their views known, and
there will also be those who oppose the war who will want to
make their points of view known. Both of these are appropriate."

Berkeley, a questioner noted, is a place where differences
of opinion in the past have escalated beyond debate. "Certainly
this is a very tense moment," the chancellor noted. "The
country is about to go to war — a war about which public
opinion in the country, if I'm
to judge by the polls, is virtually evenly divided. And my guess is that
there are very strong feelings by people within the university on both sides
of this issue.

"But," he continued, "I hope that there
is no effort to resist violence by taking acts of violence.
I think that that would not persuade people — that it
would in fact turn people the other way. So I worry a lot about
any
kind of violence, about hate crimes, or the expression of anything
that is directed against people rather than policies. We're
talking here about policies and policy differences, and I hope
that the debate is about that."

Asked what limits he thought the campus might place on personal
expression, Berdahl responded decisively. "Obviously," he
said, "we're not going to tolerate anything that's
a violation of the Code of Conduct. That means we will not
tolerate people entering and disrupting classrooms against
the will of the instructor and the class.

"But we hope it doesn't come to that," he added. "We
hope that these will be peaceful demonstrations; that there will not be efforts
at anything that smacks of violence. There may be acts of civil disobedience.
That happens, and we're very hopeful that people who engage in civil disobedience
do so simply to make a point, and not in order to create a confrontation or disturbance
that results in violence. If we're going to be demonstrating on behalf
of peace, the emphasis ought to be on peace — and on peaceful ways of expressing
our points of view."

'Remember what we're fighting for'

Berdahl was asked about recent, vague warnings by the federal
government that universities are likely 'soft targets' for
those who might take U.S. aggression against Iraq as a pretext
for terrorist actions.

"We are obviously going to be vigilant," the chancellor replied. "As
an institution that is open and free and accessible to the general public,
we obviously are 'soft' in terms of our ability to wall ourselves
off
from any kind of security threat. We will take more precautions if they seem
necessary, but we cannot close the campus down — and we cannot, it seems
to me, forestall any action that somebody is determined to make, or might be
able to make in an open and free society.

"The concern that I think all of us have is that going
to war is likely to provoke more efforts at terrorist attacks
within the United States. And as we have seen, the response
to 9/11 has been a substantial curtailment of civil liberties
within the United States, and I hope that whatever happens,
we don't see further curtailment of civil liberties.

"We've got to remember what we're fighting for,
which is the kind of constitutional government that we've
established over 200 years in this country," the chancellor
said.